Conflict is something that all couples experience. But it is not whether a couple fight and argue, but rather how they communicate during that argument that helps determine if they will stay together for the long haul, says Dr. Keith Sanford, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
Sanford studied dozens of couples as they communicated through a fight, focusing on positive and negative communication. He found that the emotions and types of thoughts a person uses are especially important.
Negative emotion can actually be a good thing. Sanford distinguishes between two types of negative emotion, "hard" and "soft."
- "Hard" emotion is associated with asserting power.
- "Soft" emotion is associated with expressing vulnerability.
Sanford and his team consistently found that hard emotion escalated fights, but they also found that soft emotion is generally beneficial for relationships. Soft emotion appears to increase a couple's motivation to address a conflict and often leads to productive approaches toward resolving the conflict.
"There is a notion that all negative emotion is bad, and we found that simply isn't the case," Sanford explained in a prepared statement. "As humans, we are very sensitive to 'Is this person going to fight against me or cooperate with me?' If you say more things that signal that you are willing to cooperate, that can make all the difference."
Men and women approach arguments differently. For example, if a wife thinks her husband will refuse to listen to her viewpoint, she is likely to use negative communication, and she is likely to do this regardless of what her husband actually does. Sanford said he was intrigued to find that wives' expectations are a stronger predictor of communication than are husbands' expectations. Specifically, wives' expectations are based on what is currently taking place in the interaction with their husband. Husbands' expectations are based on their global feelings toward the relationship as a whole.
"It's a tendency that women are more event-dependent and men are more schematic," Sanford said. "The simple take-home message is be aware of your thoughts and how you are interpreting things because it could have a negative bias and that could lead to further escalation."
--From the Editors at Netscape
